


Advance Guard

by LoxieBoxie



Series: Happy Endings [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, alpha!Dave feels, am i tagging right, and also a post-scratch alternative alternative timeline, but this verse is called happy endings so, i would call this a slice of life except for how it's not, i've been instructed to tag for alpha!dave feels so, implied character deaths because post-scratch timeline, jade's dirty pottymouth, mostly Dirk but a little bit Roxy and Jane too, post-scratch alternative timeline, really brief mentions of like three of the alpha kids, really it's just complicated shenanigans all around, really odd friendships, some really imperceptible space shenanigans too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 17:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoxieBoxie/pseuds/LoxieBoxie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider does a lot of important things in his life, and then in the lives of others, and then for the lives of others, because that's the kind of man he was always going to grow up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advance Guard

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Time Travel is Useful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/838210) by [TGP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TGP/pseuds/TGP). 



> It's pretty dang likely that this isn't going to make sense unless you read the story just before this one in the series, "Time Travel Is Useful" since I entirely based this piece off of that one.

Dave Strider’s thirteen years old, and he runs all his blogs and websites from the public library because the state-assigned foster home he lives in doesn’t have enough money to give all the kids they take care of computers. He’s one of the lucky kids, though - he’s one of six high profile Meteor Children, a handful of brats supposedly abandoned at the impact zone of an earthbound meteor, by what conspiracy theorists now say is a worldwide underground cult that - actually, who even gives a fuck about all of that? The point is, Dave’s high-profile so the system makes _damn_ sure he’s taken care of, but he doesn’t really care past that because it’s not like he’s attached to the Fosters and it’s not like he gives a single flying fuck about his biologicals. The mysteries of his birth are pointless, and he’s sure as shit not interested in anyone who left him in a possibly toxic, radioactive crater as an infant. 

Sure, he’s not rich, and he gets harassed by ‘scientists’ and ‘government agents’ after school with questions he’s pretty certain are incredibly dumb and not actually scientific at all, but he’s also got the public library’s Internet connection and blogs where he’s popular for more than just his less than orthodox upbringing. He ignores the people in real life who harangue him from all sides about what he thinks and feels about his birth and subsequent abandonment, besides informing them that there are five other people in the world who probably give more of a satisfactory shit than he does (which is not untrue, even though he knows that the first two have adopted the latest two and filed some kind of restraining order against the entirety of the media circus and that the fifth has disappeared into anonymity - if only, if only), and he focuses instead on the one’s who approach him through the Internet and talk to him about how he’s a genius before his time and that he has an excellent handle on the parody of social convention. 

They are literally talking about a shitty comic he draws because he has a sub-par sense of humor and sometimes he feels like being an asshole, and his tools of the trade are MS Paint and a spotty library track-ball mouse - he’s somehow got a following of a hundred-thousand little dumb bastards who fall all over themselves every time he gets the chance to update. Shit’s hilarious, and intensely gratifying, and irony becomes the security blanket he can pull over himself when he stays up late at night to watch fake-ass Discovery Channel documentaries about the Cosmic Cult that just can’t seem to stop chucking babies at meteors. 

Today, he’s bored. It’s the one year birthday of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, and his followers are expecting a big celebration page to make them split their sides and crack their brains open in a lobotomy of pure ‘this really makes me think’ drivel, so it’s the ultimate ironic fuck-you that he’s not going to upload anything at all. He mucks around on a couple of Suggested For You blogs, reads up on a few of the newest rap artists on the scene, and eventually finds himself on the page for a what they’re calling the ‘next big thing’. It’s some kind of fancy instant message service that they’re calling a chat client - he figures, ‘why not?’, and after he checks over his shoulder to make sure the librarian’s aren’t playing attention, he downloads it and signs up for Pesterchum v. 01. 

He forgets about it almost a week later, because he doesn’t want to talk to his fans and he hasn’t really got any friends. 

The statistics say that he’s got a twenty percent chance, as a lifelong foster kid, to make something out of his life, but at eighteen he’s got a movie deal under his belt for SB &HJ, and the original fans are so rabid about how Hollywood better not fuck this up that the studio takes him on as an apprentice Director. The best part is that the actual Director has no idea what the fuck is even going on with the script, so Dave’s the one that does most of the actual Directing and it gets his name in the credits twice. 

The moive wins a truly ludicrous amount of awards, and so does he. His red carpet interview launches a public persona of Dave “Cool as a Cucumber” Strider, and he _likes_ that so he goes with it. Suddenly, he’s famous for more than just the circumstances of his birth and it’s like people don’t even remember that he was left on a meteor as a child. His rise to the top doesn’t stop there, though, because now he’s got a taste for it and he _wants_ it; he finagles his way into an actual contract with the studios and he makes more and more money, and eventually, he’s got enough of a good thing going for him that he splits off into his own production company, and he buys back the rights for SB &HJ. 

Being a Producer and Career Executive is a hell of a lot different from being a Director and Screen Writer, but he’s about fifty shades of okay with that - the planning for an SB&HJ sequel gets started and the public goes wild. He allows the directing duties to go to someone else this time, and he starts focusing on designing some incredibly sick marketing schemes. In his downtime, he still feels a little like a dumb, poor foster kid, but that’s alright - he’s got a reputation for having approximately zero fucks to give at this point, so he takes advantage of it by ollying out of the scene whenever he’s not feeling it. 

The thing about being a famous, internationally acclaimed screen-writer, director, producer and Hollywood Bachelor is that he actually doesn’t give a shit about all of that. He likes the attention, because he is the very definition of an attention whore, and he really likes the fact that he can just sit down in front of a laptop screen while drunk as shit and call the typo-ridden document the next morning the next big hit, because he’s never been much of an over-achiever. He likes being rich, because who the hell doesn’t? He likes the fact that he’s famous for something that’s not related to a fucking cult, or a meteor, or an indeterminable mystery. He likes the fact that he has successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of the entire world with his movies and his persona, and he especially likes the fact that he has made a shit-stain of a mark on the world. He doesn’t actually care about the manner in which he achieved it all. 

The problem, though, is that he’s actually got a lot more on his plate than a bunch of stupid as shit movies and three-dimensional jpeg artifacts, and they’re not the type of problems he’d ever really expected to have. It only takes him about fifteen minutes to come up with next movie or scheme, either because he’s a genius (check-it, he’s self-certified) or because he’s selling to self-important morons, and the best part of being an executive is that he gets to delegate tasks to his minions. He gets a lot more time to himself than he would have thought, with a schedule like that. 

All his life, he’s had dreams of a place he’s never actually been to and that he’s sure doesn’t actually exist. It shouldn’t be a big deal, because kids are imaginative little cretins and it’s not really _weird_ that he made up an entire world to dream in. But these dreams aren’t really the sort of thing you’d expect from a kid, and he hates them, which is the exact reason that he’s never, ever used them to make a movie, even though it could potentially be great and not even in the moronically ironic way the SB &HJ is. The world he dreams about is made of purple, gold, and checkerboards, stained with black and red; terrible monsters haunt the spaces in between and he shouldn’t call them dreams because he’s pretty sure that the blood, death, and fear that permeates them makes them nightmares. He always wakes up from them with his heart thudding heavily in his chest and sourest, bitterest tastes lingering on the back of his tongue like copper and acrid smoke. 

The clearest parts of the dream aren’t anything more specific than blurs of color, a flash of blue, a splash of green, and a glint of violet. They’re the easiest parts to remember because of how much he _wants_ them, whenever he dreams of them, or the way he always wakes up from them feeling like a lonely little kid again. 

He still has those dreams, but he hasn’t really _thought_ about them in a long time. Last month, though, at the premiere of a movie he’d had nothing to do with but had been invited to anyway, someone had put their hand between his shoulder blades and leaned in close - she’d whispered, “Check your pesterchum messages, you butt!” into his ear, and then she was leaving before he could formulate a proper, completely nonplussed reply, but he’d caught the glimpse of curly black hair streaked with gray and dancing green eyes before she’d disappeared into the crowd. 

He starts to follow her, but a video camera and a microphone stops him before he can. 

He has no idea what her message is supposed to have meant, but he’s spent nearly every waking moment thinking about it since it happen, feeling a pull that he doesn’t know how to define in a place that he feels like he should call his center, but since that’s the stuff of incredibly boring movies, he calls it his gut. That night, he doesn’t dream about the imaginary world anymore, but instead about something else that he doesn’t remember when he wakes up; when he _does_ wake up, he feels sick and relieved in turns and he’s off the entire day. 

He also remembers what Pesterchum is. 

There is only one message waiting for him, when he downloads the new client and finally remembers what his handle and password are. The handle is teacupTautology and he’s already rolling his eyes before he’s even read the message. 

> TT: Tell me, Mr. Strider, what’s your opinion of life, liberty, and chocolate cake?  
>  TG: what the fuck even is your handle  
>  TT: Ah. I was wondering when you might finally stumble across my timid salutations.  
>  TT: And you might call it a statement on the redundancy and the minimal impact we will leave on this existence, a result of our unavailing stagnancy in the face of events much larger than could have been predicted.  
>  TG: ok  
>  TG: i dont understand a single thing you just said  
>  TT: I know.  
>  TT: Needless to say, things have not been proceeding as planned.  
>  TT: I would be absolutely delighted if you would call me Rose.  
>  TG: i feel like i should feel like youre being sarcastic  
>  TG: are you being sarcastic at me right now  
>  TG: because i have better things to do with my time than listen to some sarcastic broad confused the fuck out of me  
>  TT: Of course, my mistake. ‘Better things’ like pursuing a mediocre and immaterial effect on society and history as a whole? Shaping yourself into the most insignificant prominent figure in history?  
>  TT: I would happily allow you to continue down that rabbit hole, Mr. Strider, if that was, in fact, what you wanted. Is it?  
>  TT: Or would you like to make a difference? I’m not at all speaking of petty and trifling differences that charities and fundraisers make. I’m talking about a global cabal that has lasted longer than half a century, a ruse that you can help unveil, that would launch you into the role of a hero of the likes that human history will never forget - you won’t be known for mysterious circumstances of birth, or substandard movies without a message, but because you changed, and possibly even saved, the world.  
>  TG: ...  
>  TG: yeah ok  
>  TG: ill bite whatever it is youre trying to sell here  
>  TG: hit me with it morpheus  
>  TG: i choose the red pill  
>  TT: Excellent. 

The secrets Rose lets him in on don’t, exactly, live up to the entire spiel she gives him, and he thinks maybe she takes herself just seriously enough that she practiced the entire thing in the mirror before she gave it to him, even though she only had to type it. Even if her walk doesn’t really live up to her talk, some of the things she does have to say strike a cord in him that he doesn’t want to find familiar and unsettling. The things is, though - 

He plays it like the coolest, most uninterested motherfucker to ever stride into the celebrity scene but he’s not an idiot and he’s not blind. He’s been noticing some things lately that don’t really add up, things that strike him as weird and suspicious, but he’s never bothered to look into it. He’s always felt kind of ridiculous about his speculations on it, after all, and he’d probably keep feeling that way if not for Rose. 

She’s looking for political groups and movements, she’s focusing on the recent rash of rioting that’s broken out over the world for nearly every reason under the sun. Dave’s always had an understanding that human nature is conflict, though, so that’s not where his attention is usually focused. The stuff he pays attention to is a lot closer to home, literally, in almost every home in the free, un-oppressed world, probably innocuously filling up a kitchen cabinet with everything from powdered cake mix to packaged meals. 

Betty Crocker seems less like a brand these days and more like a propaganda machine. Their ads and promotional stunts seem a little more sinister than the usual corporate bullshit, though he can’t pin down what, exactly, it is about her generic, smiling All-American face that sets his teeth on edge. 

He tells Rose his thoughts on it against his better judgment, but surprisingly, she doesn’t mock him. She goes silent, instead, until finally - 

> TT: That makes a distressingly ominous amount of sense.  
>  TT: We should look more into this. 

So, there’s all that. The fact that he’s now a part of some secret group to reveal a conspiracy when he’d disclaimed all conspiracies at the age of thirteen, that he’s still writing shitty movies and making a killing while he does it, that those dreams of his leave him more and more off-kilter after he wakes up from them, the whole mystery surrounding the woman at the premiere, and there’s another thing. Just...one last botheration on a long list of them. 

He’s got this thing with time. 

He doesn’t really know how else to define it. 

It’s not anything really specific, but sometimes he gets the feeling like he’s far more aware and attune to it than other people are. He gets the sense that it’s been screwed up, somehow, and the feeling grates at him - and that annoys him in turn, because that’s fucking ridiculous. He’s not Doctor fucking Who, he does not _sense time_ and it absolutely cannot get ‘screwed up’. The feeling cannot be persuaded away. 

He’s got a metronome in his head, and it tic-tocs the minutes and hours away - it’s such a basic part of him, it has been all his life, that he doesn’t even realize that people don’t own clocks as a design choice, but because they actually cannot otherwise keep time, until that first gig as a Director when a late actor makes his excuses. The idea is alien to him, when that knowledge has just always been intrinsic to him - and then he gets mad, because clocks are never right in the first goddamn place, making their entire existence purposeless. Out of irony, his L.A. flat is now covered in them. 

There are other things about this that bother him. That metronome is constantly steady, but there are times when the notes sour and leave him with awful headaches and a pain in his jaw that might come from the way he grits his teeth. Most of the time, despite feeling like everything is _wrong_ , he feels like he’s got all the time in the world. It’s not always like that, though. When he talks to Rose, the beat stutters unsurely, and then it picks up, faster and heavier than before, until it stops feeling like a beat at all and instead feels like a heavy, nasty wet sponge. When he thinks about the woman from the premiere, it hiccups and misses every other beat. When he thinks about his dreams, he doesn’t hear it at all, and he gets the uneasy sense that it’s because there is no more time to be had in those. 

He gets a message from Rose, one day, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense - but since she never does, that’s pretty par the course. 

> TT: Build a house in the sky. All the way above the Houston skyline.  
>  TG: thats such a completely preposterous idea  
>  TG: its perfect  
>  TG: you perfect human being you 

It _is_ a preposterous idea, almost near to the altitude of impossible, but he’s always kind of liked the sky. He assumes he does, anyway, since his phone has about a hundred different meteorological alert systems and astronomy feeds on it; the sky makes him feel like he’s waiting for some kind of cosmic event that he wasn’t invited to but that he’s going to crash anyway. It’s another one of those things that sours the beat in his head, but it’s not just heavy like it is with her, it’s downright _oppressive_ , like summer in the Bayou. 

It takes some hunting, but he finally finds contractors willing to help him design his impossible dream home, though they tell him in no uncertain terms that there’s no way he’s getting plumbing that fucking high. He’s cool with that - he doesn’t intend to actually _live_ there, after all, he just likes the symbolism. He doesn’t think he could live there if he wanted to, anyway, once they start the actual construction - he stands on the ground and looks up, up, up to where the frame of it is, and he feels sick and discordant. He’s starting to get really fucking tired of feeling things for no discernible reason. 

He christens it with a public announcement where he calls it his Sky-Rise Abode, the pinnacle of a celebrity crib penthouse and he lackadaisically hires someone to sparsely furnish it, but after that it gets sent to the back of his mind and he, mostly, decides to forget he ever made the decision to have it built. 

There’s still too many pieces that are missing to put together the puzzle he feels he’s been struggling with for his entire life. Things just get weirder from there. 

He meets Joe Egbert for the first time when things start coming to a head. He’s been in New York for a couple of days now, and his reasons are twofold - he’s got a business deal to make with a manufacturing company with an idea that’s been years in the making and that’s going to make both of their respective companies richer than god, and because NYC is the chosen setting for some kind of press conference announcement that the Betty Crocker brand wants to make. 

It’s not a nice day at all - it’s a wet, rainy, gray day, but the business meeting has gone fantastically, and Dave’s stolen a frothy cappuccino off some poor, bewildered intern and he makes a decision that it’s the perfect time to go on a walk. Someone offers to carry an umbrella for him, but he declines the offer because it’s not like a little rain hurts anyone. He gets a little lost, but his phone has GPS so he’s not too worried; he’s pretty sure he wanders into some less than safe neighborhoods, but no one bothers him as he sips at his drink and absently plays Fruit Ninja. 

He finds himself slowing to a stop outside of a condemned building. It takes him a moment to realize that he _has_ stopped, and he frowns as he slides the lock on his phone and tucks his back into his pocket. He’s alone on the street, surprisingly - he’s been under the impression that it’s impossible to have an empty street in the Big Apple, but it appears to be patently untrue. He frowns, because he doesn’t know what else to do, and he surveys the building he’s stopped in front of. 

It looks like an old apartment building; it’s not very tall, but it’s tall enough, and there are broken rails along all of the balconies; the southern end of it looks like it’s been gutted by a fire, so he can make assumptions as to _why_ it’s condemned. There’s something else, though, and his gaze gets caught on the broken balcony of an upper-story apartment - there’s nothing special about this one, except that the railing is gone from it completely and the the balcony itself looks crooked and attached wrong. Something about it wants his attention, though, like a nagging buzz in his ear, and the longer he looks at it, the stronger it gets. Seconds later, it turns into a full-blown need to _go_ , and it’s not a feeling that a simple question of ‘go _where_?’ can fix. 

He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He wants to go...something else. He _needs_ to go. His pulse is fluttering rapidly beneath his skin and he doesn’t think he’s ever been so worked up about something so _pointless_. There is literally no point to this, it’s so fucking useless he can’t even stand it, so he makes himself close his eyes. He makes himself breathe in and hold it, and when he thinks he’s better, he breathes out. 

Paradigms shift in his mind, the metronome taps out a new beat, and then it scratches like a fucking record, and then suddenly the noises around him are so different that he opens his eyes and he’s...definitely where he was before, but everything’s different. The building is whole, for one, everything put together correctly and no ominous looking broke railings anywhere; and it’s lived in. There are chairs and laundry and potted plants in the balconies, and sometimes even people. He looks to the one that caught his attention before and it is whole, but devoid of life, and he forces himself to look away because it still makes him feel strange. This is strange enough without adding more to the pile of shit he doesn’t understand. 

A chuckle from his side grabs his attention, and he turns to find a surprisingly dapper looking old man smiling crookedly at him; Dave automatically assumes the two little kids that are running around giggling belong to him, though he’s not sure why. He’s...honestly, he’s feeling a little faint, and the Starbucks cup in his hand is shaking, minutely. 

“You’re looking a little out of place there, kiddo.” He takes the cup out of Dave’s hand and Dave lets his hand fall back to his side, unable to even begin to formulate a response or objection. What the shit is going on. 

“Long day?” Dave absolutely does not whimper, because he’s an aloof asshole and aloof asshole’s don’t whimper. His throat clicks as he tries to make it work, and then he huffs out a shaky breath through his nose and runs his hand through his blond hair. 

“You...you’ve got no fucking idea.” He watches the old man drink his cappuccino with something akin to relish, watches the little kids ignore them, and he’s just generally sort of bewildered right now. 

“Ah, maybe a little bit of an idea, ol’ chap. Don’t fret, young man, there’s still plenty of time.” Dave would say something, but the man’s already walking away from him, catching a blur of little girl as she sails into him while gleefully screaming ‘grandpa’. She’s got the brightest green eyes, and the little boy hot on her heels has the brightest blue, and looking at them _hurts_. Or maybe that’s just the tugging feeling at his sternum, and he chokes a little and hunches into himself, clutching at his chest like he’s having a fucking heart attack, but he forces himself to straighten up and watch them, because he can’t look _away_. 

He starts telling them some sort of story and they’re so entranced they don’t really take notice of him (he’ll be grateful for that in the future), but Dave’s not really paying attention to that. He’s watching those kids, and he’s struck with a sort of feeling like he’d like to make sure they got everything they ever wanted in their lives - the little girl is brash and loud and giggly, and the blue-eyed boy is all of those things and something more, something Dave just can’t put his finger on, for some reason...(he also clumsy as fuck and awkward-kneed, so Dave calls him Humpty Dumpty and the little girl gets to be Space Cadet). 

There’s another pull, while he’s trying to suss it out, and he falters because it’s a much more _insistent_ pull. He mentally strains against the unfamiliar feeling for a moment, but...this is how he got into this mess, he thinks. So he closes his eyes again, hopes for the best, and relaxes; 

And then he’s never been more thankful to breathe in the toxic air of modern New York City, even if he open his eyes to an alley that smells like piss and dead hobos. He gives the faintest nose-wrinkle of disdain, turns, and starts back towards his original destination. He doesn’t have the time to think about Time-Traveling Shenanigans (a lie, because the metronome is steady and constant again and it says he has plenty of time), but he has no intentions of ignoring it. He just...needs a little bit of time to come to terms with what the fuck just happened before he throws himself headfirst into it, again. He might be going crazy. 

The Betty Crocker announcement is the naming of the Heiress Apparent, and Dave hasn’t got any idea what a company that specializes in cake mix needs with an _heiress_ , but since she’s just a fifteen year old kid, he doubts she’s up to anything malicious. Just another pawn in the unknown game the Baroness is playing. 

Dave gets tired of her making all the moves and leaving him and Rose to scramble to catch up, so he starts putting anti-propaganda into his movies. It doesn’t go unnoticed, but no one seems to really cotton onto what he’s trying to say - just the public enmity between the enigmatic Dave Strider and the homely Baroness. There’s supporters on each side, but the public awareness of the real problem is still paltry. His _own_ awareness of what the real problem might be is still paltry, and Rose is having just as much difficulty as he is. It’s honestly not looking good for their little insurgent rebellion, especially since neither of them have any real idea of what it is they’re rebelling _against_. 

It’s enough that trying to figure out what happened to him in New York is almost a relief, despite his initial, incredibly uncool reaction to it. He’s pretty certain at this point that he took a day trip back in time, never mind the sheer impossibility of that statement. It takes him a long string of sleepless nights before he accepts it, and then another set of restless nights before he manages to actually _do it_ again, on his own. 

It takes a lot out of him, honestly. 

The old man - Dave’s not sure why he’s appeared near him again - sits him down at the kitchen table and hands him hot chocolate and Dave’s worn out from too many nights playing an insomniac and the apparently massive amount of energy time-traveling takes, so he just goes along with it. The sky outside the window his dark with the night, so he assumes that the kids he saw before are in bed and that the old guy is pretty hard up on sleep himself. He watches as he lights a cigar, and he thinks about telling him about the health risks before he decides, nah, fuck it. More important matters to contend with, here. 

“How are you not freaking out about this? Dude just keeps randomly appearing in front of you and you just tweak your mustache and go with the flow?” He asks, because maybe he meant to do it this time, but he’s still freaking out about it a little bit. The old guy just seems pretty chill with everything. 

“When you live to be my age, you see a lot in your lifetime.” Wow. Why doesn’t he hang out with more old people, they are far more relaxed than half the people he _is_ forced to socialize with. He’s pretty sure this man has the swag meter turned all the way up to ‘dangerous’. 

“I think that’s the most metal reply I’m ever going to get to that question, ever.” He tells him, and the man laughs with his gut but the way that he keeps the volume down tells Dave that he’s right about the kidlets being asleep. 

“Another product of being old, I assure you. I was once married to a witch, you know - that’s the kind of thing that teaches a man how to pull up his bootstraps. The name’s Sassacre, but everyone around here calls me Old Man English.” Dave spends the rest of the year familiarizing himself with these powers of his, though he pretty consistently ends up on Sassacre’s doorstep; eventually it stops taking so much out of him and he ends up getting drafted by the crafty old codger into helping him out with household chores while Joe and Jade (the names of the two kids) are out and Joe’s dad is at work. He’s not sure why he hasn’t met anyone else in English’s household, but he never feels like pushing the issue and Sassacre never broaches it himself, so it sort of goes stale between them as an issue that’s not actually, really, an issue at all. The one thing that he cannot get a hold of when it comes to time travel is when he leaves; there’s always resistance when he goes back, but it gets easier and easier to field - but he can never stay for too long, because something always slingshots him back to his own time. The tugging feeling at his sternum is the only warning he’s allowed before he’s dragged back. 

Between Sassacre and Rose, Dave’s starting to suspect that he will never have orthodox friendships. 

The last time he ever speaks to the man, he shows up to find him standing at the balcony and staring into the darkness; there’s a forgotten mug on the railing, and Dave’s stomach twists because he hates this balcony. This balcony makes him feel choked up and _fearful_ , it makes that sense of time in the back of his head go fucking nuts - but there’s something sad and painful on the old man’s face, so he endures the feeling and steps out. Sassacre knows he’s there - he always does. 

“Sup?” He asks, because no one ever told him that he’d have to deal with emotional moments when he grew up. The man exhales and it sounds shaky and heavy, he shakes his head, and Dave’s struck by just how _old_ the man is. His skin is liver-spotted and there’s a palsy in his hands, and he knows, without a doubt, that the old man’s not going to last much longer. 

It shouldn’t shake him like it does, because it’s just one old man who’s already dead in his future, but... 

“Don’t mind me, chap.” Sassacre dismisses, with a smile that’s bittersweet. “Just watching the future move forward. I forgot how quickly children grow up, these days.” Dave’s not sure what he means, until he looks out over the border of the balcony and to the streets below - he sees Joe and Jade (teenagers, now, when did that happen?) walking side by side down the street with their bags over their shoulders and no hesitation in their steps. Dave winces, and for some reason he feels like he echoes the obvious sadness in the old man’s face. He doesn’t want to see them go, either. 

“That’s...harsh. You’re not going to try to stop them?” He laughs, wistfully, shakes his head and pats Dave on the shoulder as he brushes past him and back inside. Dave hesitates with one last look towards the street before he follows. 

“And what would be the point of stopping them? They’d be unhappy and they’d grow to resent me. They’ve been wanting to go for some time now, I think, so I’m happy I had what time with them that I did. I’d rather them to be happy and to remember me fondly then to be unhappy and bitter.” Dave doesn’t know what to say to that, but the rest of the night proceeds as usual, and his next visit he shows up only to hear harsh coughing coming from one of the back rooms, and - Dave can’t deal with that, so he leaves without another word and he doesn’t come back. 

He’s been doing everything in his power to fight back against Crocker without showing his hand, between those visits. Rose is still keeping secrets from him, but she comes through when it’s important - he’s yet to actually meet her face to face, but that’s alright. Right now, the job is research; he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, or who exactly the Batterbitch really is, but he knows _something_ fishy is going down. 

He feels like using the word fishy is a pun, but he ignores it. 

What he really needs to figure out is just how deep the bullshit goes and just what her endgame is; but he’s got nothing. She’s been in power so long that he’s not even sure it’s not some shady counsel of Crocker-stock-holders rather than the Baroness herself. She’s careful about everything, there’s still technically nothing he can pin on her except a general sense of creepiness, and he’s thoroughly fed up with not _knowing_. He resorts to his usual tactic for frustration and major creative blocks - Wikipedia. Nearly two hours of article-chaining pass with nothing but growing boredom, when he stumbles across something that catches his attention. 

The Boston Molasses Disaster. He considers the page for a long, long time, arguing with himself about it - it’s not like it can be related, really. But. But. The subject matter is suspicious, because the _timing_ is suspicious. Only two years before the ‘creation’ of the Betty Crocker name, and sure, it’s not baking molasses - it’s supposed to be distilled for munitions, or whatever - it still falls pretty clearly into a certain category. There’s no use in waffling over it, is what he finally decides. Either there’s something to it, or there’s not, and the only way to find out which it is, is to go _look_. 

He’s had more than a little practice with the time thing, in the past year. He’s gotten good at figuring out how to manipulate it to do what he wants, to not have to depend on dubious instinct if he wants something _specific_ , but he’s never been able to go somewhere not connected to Sassacre and he’s not sure if he _can_. He has to try, though, so he does, and it only takes a little bit of metronomic work before - 

The first thing he really thinks as he observes the scene is that he hadn’t expected the smell - the thick, cloying smell of caramelized brown sugar, so much of it that it’s overwhelming. It turns his stomach, or maybe that’s just the extent of the destruction talking, but - well, you read about something called the molasses flood and you know, intuitively, that it’s a disaster, that people died and hundreds were injured, but there’s still something humorous about it because it’s fucking _molasses_. There is nothing funny about this. 

The second thing he thinks is, _it worked_. He’s made it, he’s gone back to Boston in 1919 and he’s done it without Sassacre as his apparent frame of reference, and that opens a whole slew of possibilities that he puts out of his mind, for now. 

Ironically, he doesn’t have the _time_ to linger and consider those possibilities. He’s still not Doctor Who and he can’t just wander in and out of disaster areas through time, because Crocker’s bound to start noticing and then his title of ‘annoying but harmless movie maker’ gets destroyed. He stays away from the first responders and the few intrepid photographers as much as he can, but he can’t bring himself to ignore the victims; if they’re alive, he pulls them to a clearer area and clears their airways - otherwise, he leaves the bodies to their graves, because it’ll preserve them better until someone else can get to them. He makes it to the tank, but that’s not what he’s interested in. 

Past it, the company building is still, miraculously, intact - it’s covered in sticky brown gunk, but so is everything else, including _him_. He slips by the employees that have gathered outside to either gawk or help, and inside the building he takes terrible advantage of the tragedy to snoop through administrator documents and company leaflets unimpeded. 

There’s no wifi in 1919, so he can’t exactly research what he finds; his phone still works as a camera, though, so he makes the mistake of digging it out of his pocket to take pictures, and he only realizes when it’s in his hand that he’s covered in _syrup_. He frowns. The phone will survive, or at least it had _better_ , or he’ll be suing the pants off of a certain distributer, but it’s probably never going to stop being sticky. 

He likes this phone, and he’s already composing a bitchily worded letter about the stick-resistance of the materials used to create it before he remembers what he’s here for, again. It takes approximately fifteen minutes to take pictures of everything even vaguely important or suspicious looking, and then he’s out of the building and more than prepared to head back, when he spots a splash of familiar blue and he turns. 

It’s...some dumbass teenager getting himself involved in all the death and destruction, and Dave frowns at him from the distance. He’s familiar, and Dave thinks about his dreams, but then he thinks about a little boy with blue eyes, and the little girl with green eyes, and that’s - really? He’s never expected to see Joe or Jade again, especially not in Boston during the molasses flood. That’s a little bit more than a coincidence, honestly. Dave’s starting to believe in coincidences less and less, especially when it comes to this time-traveling voodoo he can do. 

He hesitates, a little - he wonders if they know what happened to Sassacre, or if they’ve been home since they left. He wants to go up and say hi, to introduce himself _finally_ , but then he realizes that it sounds completely creepy even in his own head, and even if it didn’t, in the middle of a disaster is probably not the time to go up to them and say ‘hey, I knew your granddad let’s get a cup of coffee and talk’. Yeah, no, that’s not ever going to fly, but it does make him realize something that he’s been overlooking for awhile, now - linearly speaking, Sassacre is dead, but...Dave’s a time traveler. 

It’s not like he can’t just go back and choose a time when the man’s still alive and well, right? 

He puts it out of his mind for the moment, though not so far he forgets about it, and for once he goes back to his proper time _before_ The Tug forces him to; he and Rose pour over the papers and what they find is disturbing and shocking, and they start to slowly piece things together. It could go faster, but the fact that it’s going at all is better than what’s the unfortunate norm for them. 

The first time he tries to go back, things don’t exactly go according to plan. For one, he doesn’t appear inside the apartment like he usually does, and it’s definitely not the usual time of night, either. Instead, he’s standing outside of the building in confusion and he’s pretty sure it’s mid-afternoon. Sassacre is nowhere in sight, and instead, there’s a bucktoothed teenage girl with green eyes that he abruptly finds familiar, though the how and why escapes him. For once, Jade seems to be without Joe, which is strange enough because the two of them might as well have been attached at the hip for how little they tended to leave one another’s side. She’s not crying, but she looks like she might be considering it with the way she hunches over her legs and glumly plucks at her bandaged knee. 

He’s at least managed to get the timing right, if she’s still around, even if he didn’t get the place right. But Dave definitely doesn’t believe in coincidences anymore, and she looks far too distressed and conflicted to simply leave be, so Dave sits down on the bench next to her, and for the first time, he says something to one of the terrible two. 

“Sup?” She startles, a little, wipes at her eyes with her wrist even though they’re completely dry, and proceeds to make a face at him like she suspects he’s either foreign or retarded, but it’s followed quickly by a smiling laugh that’s only a little stilted by whatever it is that’s bothering her. 

“What? It’s...It’s barely even after lunch, dummy, you can’t have supper yet!!!” She’s got a really expressive face, and Dave’s almost taken aback by it, but it’s...refreshing, after dealing with celebrities and dead-eyed paparazzi for so long. 

“Regional slang, my bad.” He apologizes, and she wrinkles her nose at the blatant insincerity but doesn’t say anything. “The question, rephrased for the typical media standard, was: you look troubled, young student, how may sensei assist you?” 

“What are you even talking about?? You’re pretty strange!” She must decide to trust him, though, or else she really needs to vent at someone, because after a moment’s hesitation, she starts talking again. Dave’s okay being the crazy guy she talks about her problems to, because at least she’s talking about them to _someone_. “But...I guess it’s a pretty dumb thing to be worried about, you know? The thing that I’m worried about, not the fact that you’re pretty strange!” He lets his silence encourage her to keep talking, and she’s a peach, because she takes it - he’s just not sure what else to do when he’s called strange except to shrug his shoulders, because it’s true, but it also doesn’t really matter. 

“Well...so, there’s this guy, right? And he’s been sort of courting me!” Dave makes an appropriate ‘oh no’ face, even if it is literally just an expression he makes with his mouth and no other part of his face; the girl laughs anyway, takes a moment to playfully shove him like they’ve been friends all their life. Maybe they have, in a way, in that they’ve never met but he’s technically seen her grow up. 

“Shut up! The thing is...he makes me really uncomfortable! And I don’t know what to do, because everyone else is just really, really happy about it - except for my best friend, I don’t think he likes him very much either. Everyone’s pushing me to just say yes to him, and I don’t want to, because I don’t want to start a family or be some...some...some _ass-face’s_ ‘doll’! That’s stupid. But if I don’t every one’ll be really disappointed, and...argh!” She falls silent, and Dave takes it to mean she’s done - which is good, because he’s sort of getting the heebie jeebies from the fact that there’s a bunch of people that want a teenage girl to get with some older dude none of them really know. 

The early 1900’s, man, they were whack. 

“If you’re not picking up what he’s putting down, then that’s that.” He shrugs, sinking into the bench, because he cannot _believe_ he’s about to give legitimate life-advice to a teenage girl. She looks too worried, though, and this is Dave officially admitting that he has a weak spot. “It’s dope that you want your family to be happy, all the maddest of props to you, but you’ve got to think about the big picture here. What you want for yourself is more important than what anyone else wants for you - you’re the one that’s gotta live with the bad decisions you make, it’s just a matter of which decision is the ‘bad’ one.” 

He’s not sure it’s all that inspiring, really, but she considers it for all of two seconds before she’s perking up like he just gave her the literal key to the most important question in the whole universe, and before he knows what’s happened he’s been hugged _and_ absconded on. It’s a very surreal experience, and as Dave sits there, he realizes with a sinking feeling just which conversation Sassacre is going to have with him, tonight. Dave closes his eyes, leans his head back, and he sits there until he’s tugged back into his proper place. 

It’s never crossed his mind before, but he realizes that Sassacre hadn’t been the only constant to his time-traveling shenanigans; there are two others, and their names are Joe and Jade. He thinks about how he doesn’t believe in coincidences any more, and he makes his decision. 

He follows them, between his research and his slowly growing rebellion, and they hit up the entire fucking east coast. It’s a little ridiculous, and a little bit adorable. He doesn’t exactly follow them, just drops in here and there, and it’s a little bit of a trip that sometimes they’re older and sometimes they’re younger - he’d been completely linear with Sassacre, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards with these two. He keeps his distance because he doesn’t really want to interfere with their lives, but he keeps his eye on them nonetheless. They’re important, he’s decided, and the only problem is that he doesn’t know how or why they’re important, yet. 

He doesn’t let his thoughts linger too long on that issue, though, or with how enamored he is with them, because he hasn’t seen either of them older than sixteen and he’s not going to be That Guy. 

The thing is, he starts to like them. He starts to like them a lot, and it’s not that he didn’t like them before, because he did, but now he’s got _reasons_ to like them. They’re good people, even for being so young, and hell - he even likes how so beyond their time they are, without even realizing it. He keeps an eye on them as best as he can, but he decides early on to do his best not to interfere with their lives. It’s not his place, and he owes it to them and Sassacre to let their lives play out as they will - he’s just their invisible guardian angel, he supposes. 

On November 11, 2011, everything falls into place, every piece of the puzzle, every single mystery suddenly makes sense. 

The Batterbitch is an alien. 

She is an honest to fucking god, swear it on your boy scout badges and fox-eared bibles, sing it on the mountain, _alien_. This is a legitimate War of the Worlds scenario, it’s Independence Day without Will Smith, it’s Signs with full out Shyamalan twists - the Batterbitch is here, and she’s _been_ here, and what she really, really wants most is to have everyone Consume, Obey, Submit. He finds that it’s the end of the world as he knows it, and he does _not_ feel fine. Everything’s going to shit so fast it’s mind-blowing, and he and Rose are forced to go into hiding as the world upends itself. The government goes bananas and somehow it’s _Hollywood_ that ends up with all the power; celebrities start making political decisions, and Dave doesn’t even understand how the world works, anymore. 

Fucking _aliens_. 

There’s a lot of ways he could deal with this. He could make plans, strategize, he could contact Rose, really put together the resistance - they’ve gained a lot of followers, now. But he’s just found out aliens are real, and that they are definitely aggroing the shit out of the Earth, and his newest bad habit comes in the form of two funny looking kids trekking the East Coast and representin’. He can’t admit that he’s protective as shit of the girl, or that Joe’s crooning gets to him in ways that he’s not sure he can actually legally describe, but watching them takes the edge off of the stress and there is a shit ton of stress going around. 

He’s not really expecting to appear where he does, back at the beginning if he’s supposed to be speaking linearly. It takes him a moment to even recognize where he’s at, and mostly because he’s never really turned up here, before - Egbert’s Delicate Delights. It’s a candy shop, he thinks, and he smirks wryly because he bets Joe _hates_ candy. 

Huh. 

He’s not really sure where that thought came from. 

Joe’s about ten, this time, when he finds him. Dave turns to him, and he can’t quite remember if this is the second time Joe’s seen him, or not. He thinks it is, but then he remembers that he shouldn’t count the times that he’s seen Joe and Joe hasn’t seen him. He’s been doing pretty good about keeping just out of sight. He is not lost, though, like the boy seems to think he is. He knows where and when he is, he knows _everything_ now, he thinks, and he still knows nothing at all. He feels tired, and he knows he’s promised himself to stay out of their lives, but he just wants something simple, for once. 

“I’m not lost.” He tells him, and this is the first time he’s spoken to Joe. “I’m the epitome of found, just need an old mammie to sing low in my ear about the foundness I am.” It’s incredibly lame, but he can’t even deal with the idea of giving a shit, right now. He focuses on other things. This kid grows up to be someone pretty fucking unbelievable, but now that Dave’s looking he can see the start of it even now. It takes a moment for him to catch onto what the kid’s implying, because he cannot _fathom_ why he might _not_ be wearing clean, fresh, fashionable clothes, but when he does he pauses and he nods, and he offers his own little nugget of concern. 

“No more falling off of balconies?” This whole conversation will be a blurry memory to him, in the future, but even now he’s not at all sure what the fuck he’s talking about. Something about balconies and falling but this is not an event that happens, to his knowledge, and he’s starting to suspect that he might be in shock about the whole alien thing. He will have to think about the possible consequences of time traveling while in shock, later. 

In any case, Joe replies with the positive and some nonsense about being careful (bullshit, he thinks, as he remembers Sassacre’s stories about street fights and the determination he saw as Joe worked to free people from hardening molasses). 

Joe starts to get antsy about some teenaged punk that thinks he can look scary by puffing up his lungs and pouting, but Dave’s got _aliens_ to deal with back home and this kid just looks kind of ridiculous - he’s not scared of him, connections or not, but when Tiny over here does something... _weird_ (and who’s _he_ to call someone weird?) and kind of windy, Dave lets himself be pulled away from the scene. Why the fuck not. 

When they stop, Dave wonders why they didn’t go further and then realizes that not everyone’s spent the last year trying to outrun Crockercorp assassins and mercenaries. Especially not some ten year old kid who’s never heard the name Betty Crocker in his life. Still, he plays the part of the chilly older businessman, and he straightens his vest and says something about spoilers and fun and lies, but honestly, Dave doesn’t really pay attention to half the shit that comes out of his mouth. 

This meeting is coming to an end, already, and he knows it. He can feel Time trying to slingshot him back to the right place, and he struggles to hold on just a little longer, because he doesn’t _want_ to go, yet. He leaves his name, and he gets one he already half knew in return. Joe Egbert, and he almost wants to laugh at that ridiculous surname but he’s already breathing in modern air again. 

At some point after the Batterbitch completely screws the world over, he realizes that this doesn’t really feel like it’s his fight and that he’s not sure it ever did. He and Rose are just the preliminary round, the first line of defense, trying to keep things together for the real heroes. Not that he knows who the real heroes are, but when he tells Rose his theory she tells him that he’s not actually, entirely, wrong. And then she tells him about her visions. 

What follows is his first attempt to go _Forwards_ instead of Back, and it goes about as well as he’d known it would before he tried. He’s been certain for a while now that this time traveling business is tied, somehow, to Jade and Joe. This is the only time that he’s ever, _ever_ resented that fact, to the point that he throws a temper tantrum big enough to rival Gordon Ramsay and he breaks a few priceless items and fails to give a fuck. 

He tries not to care, but it’s one of the worst things he’s ever experienced; he doesn’t know why he cares _so much_. He’s never met this kid and he’s never going _to_ meet him; he tries to tell himself it’s just because he’s frustrated that going forward isn’t as easy as, he’s discovered over the past year, yo-yoing backwards in time is, but he knows that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that he’s never wanted a kid in his life and he’s still angry and destroyed that he’s never going to meet the kid that’ll be known as Dirk Strider. He drinks himself into a near coma the days following the attempt, and when he wakes up there is a blond bombshell attending to him, but any attraction to her is immediately curdled by his instant recognition of who she is (another part of him relaxes, because her eyes are lavender and she’s the last missing piece of the part of those dreams that feel like nightmares without blue and green and her). 

“Jesus, Lalonde, are you stalking me now?” 

“Considering the delicate information I recently divulged to you, I felt this was the only obvious and likely place for you to disappear to in your following downward spiral of angst-ridden self-destruction. It was quite a hassle figuring out how to get up here, by the way, so I must commend you on your ingenuity.” 

“My castle fortress in the damn sky, just waiting for it’s future captive princess.” He sighs and slides off the couch and onto his feet, giving Rose just enough time to back away and give him some space, and he looks around the empty apartment with disdain. “Seriously, though, the kid’s going to have to live _here_? That’s shady as hell, Rose. It’s emptier than a Ferrari at a gas station.” 

“I suppose you’ll have to fill it, then.” She says it like she’s unconcerned, but when she hands him a list of what will, eventually, be all of Dirk’s favorite things, he doesn’t question it - he just pulls out his phone and starts buying, and he memorizes every item he buys because it’s the only way he’ll ever know him. With her help, he figures out which features he needs to add to the apartment that will one day sustain his little brother-child, because getting water up that high will apparently not be a problem in the post-apocalyptic future he will live in, especially after the ice-caps melt and flood the entire world. He hires contractors to reinforce everything, because it’s going to need to withstand hurricanes and Texan storms, and an electrician to work out a self-sufficient generator that’s subtle. The plumbing is apparently one of the more important features, since apparently Dirk will take legendary showers one day. What a precious fucking kid. 

By the time evening falls, they find themselves on the roof. He looks down on it all, at Houston, miles below them, and marvels that he can be so high up and the sky still be so far away. From here, the cars on the street look like little candies, and he’s struck a little, by how isolated it all feels. One day, another Strider will stand here and when he looks around, all he will see is water. 

He won’t even know there’s another human until he’s thirteen goddamn years old. 

“...how are they supposed to live like this? How are they even going to _survive_?” Rose hesitates, lowers whatever knitting thing she’s been working on for the past thirty minutes, and frowns thoughtfully into the distance for a long moment before she finally answers. 

“I don’t know. Honestly, I know a lot less than you think I do. I know when they’re getting here, and I know that they _will_ live up until the game starts, but I know nothing before or after that. I don’t know what will happen to us. I don’t know what will happen with the Batterwitch. I don’t know that we can’t _change_ what happens, either, that we can’t make it a better future for them.” 

“But it’s better to be prepared for the worst, right?” 

“Yes, unfortunately. There’s nothing more I would like to do than to make sure that neither of them will ever be lonely, desperate, or terrified, but...but we need to make sure all our bases are covered, because if we _do_ fail, and we’ve prepared for nothing, then that leaves them quite literally dead in the water.” He hates that she’s right, or that he has to concede the fact that she’s right. He hates thinking about these two hopeless kids from the future who will somehow manage to grow up without affection or interaction, he hates thinking that he’s going to fail as a Guardian simply because he’s never going to get the chance to meet them. 

For some reason, he thinks about Joe and Jade, and he thinks about preparing for the worst, and how he’s promised to interfere in their lives as little as possible, and he thinks about there’s kids in the future that might die horrible painful deaths that he can’t prevent, and then he thinks that maybe he doesn’t want that to happen, Joe and Jade. He’s on automatic when he pulls out his phone, and he searches public records for their names - Joe Egbert and Jade English. He finds them, and he _almost_ wishes he didn’t - both of them deserve better than the Boston police riot of 1919, and he’s already decided that he’s going to provide it. He can’t save Dirk or Roxy - Joe and Jade are another matter entirely. 

Rose peers up at him as he stands, but he waves her off. 

“Don’t mind me, just handing out better futures at the Your-Death-Would-Suck kitchen, free of charge and explanation.” 

“Dave, what -” He’s going to have to answer her questions, later, but he’s trying to remember where he got his first quality fake ID at when he’d been sixteen, and then with a shrug he decides there’s no better way to remember than to go back to when he’d _been_ sixteen. He’s tied to time-traveling to _them_ , but technically speaking he’s trying to _save_ them and that is a thing that’s definitely tied to them in an abstract way. The last thing he sees before the world shifts is Rose’s gaping face, and when the world resettles around him again, he doesn’t bother trying to deny the brief smirk on his face. 

Honestly, it takes less finagling then he initially thought it would, but somewhere between waiting for the new IDs and secretly filing a few proof of identity papers without anyone being any the wiser, he realizes that it’s not like he has to set up a whole life for them. The two of them are so free-spirited that he doubts they’d appreciate that sort of pigeon-holing. So he gets them the basics, and he stubbornly ignores the insistent pull trying to bring him back and forces himself further - he nearly cuts it too close. Joe’s got Jade pinned to the ground, hovering over her protectively while bullets fly overhead and the crowd panics and tramples and bleeds; it actually takes effort to get to them, and he Shifts the moment he sets his hand on Joe’s shoulder. 

They’re standing in a Boston alleyway, and there’s no way he was ever going to bring the two of them to _his_ ‘present’. He wants them to live _good_ lives, _full_ lives, and with the way things are going with him...that’s not going to to fly. So instead he drops them off a little earlier, and he trusts that they’ll stay safe and get themselves settled (or keep wandering, either one) - Jade’s looking at him with recognition, but he can’t spare her much attention, and Joe’s looking out at the street, but Dave can’t tell if it’s with confusion or wonder. It doesn’t matter, he’s running out of time, he’s got _shit to do_ and that feeling is back - the heavy, spongy one, but now it feels wrung out and ragged, and he knows without a doubt that this time, he really is almost out of time. 

“Where are we?” Jade asks, and Dave stops, suddenly, and his mind _screams_ at him. He doesn’t know what it is about this moment that makes him realize, if it’s the finality of it all, or the way Joe looks right now, as he stares out at the future of the Boston he knows, but the metronome in his head finally has a meaning - it’s telling him that it’s almost his cue, and if he doesn’t make it on time, nothing else is going to matter at all. The Balcony. The _fucking balcony_ , he has to go and he has to do it _now_ , because he’s exhausting what control over Time he _has_. 

“Planet Vulcan.” He says, even though they’re not gonna get that reference until they catch up, and he just hopes they’ll have the good sense to look back on it - and maybe him - fondly, “Star date who gives a fuck, not this guy.” He gives them their new identities, and he focuses, breathes, shoves that metronome _again_ , even though it’s starting to sound strained --- 

\----just in time to catch the kid that’s hurtling towards him from that fucking New York balcony. 

Joe tells him he’s pretty, in a weird sort of way. 

Dave tells him to be more careful, even though he knows that the kid’s going to have the wind dancing at his fingertips one day. He lets him go to Jade when she bursts out, and he steps back, because otherwise he’d stay as long as he could, and he lets the pull take him back to where he’s supposed to be. 

Rose is waiting for him in his apartment with pursed lips, and she eyes him when he sags down onto the couch and closes his eyes. 

“I don’t think you’re meant to be able to do that.” She tells him, evenly, and he just shrugs his shoulders and raises his brows from behind his shades. She falls silent, then, and he knows she’s not angry that he’s been mucking around with time lines, just concerned for him. He can’t blame her for that, because right now he feels like he can sleep forever. 

“If we don’t act soon, we’re going to lose this war.” He tells her, instead of anything to assuage her worry - not that he thinks coddling her would work, with the way she stoically nods. Maybe he’s wrong, though, and maybe he’s misread her this whole time, because she almost immediately falls to sit next to him and she hides her face in her hands. 

She’s scared. He’s scared. Neither of them really believe they’re going to make it out of this alive. It’s not going to stop them. 

“We need to be strategic about this. Right now, there are three people causing the most problems and they need to be taken care of.” 

“If I have to stomach looking at Guy Fierri’s fat fucking face in person, I will gauge my own eyes out.” Dave complains, and it’s enough to make Rose lift her head and give him a mysteriously smug smile, like he’s said something amusing without realizing it. She nods, though. 

“Very well. I’ll handle the High Chaplain, you’ll dismiss the Mirthful Executives.” They take a few moments to strategize what happens afterwards, because they both know they’ll need to hide from the fallout for a few weeks after they assassinate the traitorous assholes currently in charge - they discuss where to meet up afterwards, for the final showdown, and then there’s not much talking at all as they each prepare themselves for battle. 

He’s Dave Strider, and how old he is doesn’t really matter. He’s lived an eventful life, and he’s not really _prepared_ to die...but he’s ready to do what’s necessary to preserve whatever future there may or may not be. He and Rose might not be the real heroes, but maybe being the Advance Guard really isn’t all that bad. 

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. this story got entirely out of hand.


End file.
